The Week in Pictures: Sept. 1 - 8

The Week in Pictures: Sept. 1 - 8

Trees rise from a field submerged by water from the flooded Brazos River in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey on Sept. 1 near Freeport, Texas.

One week after Harvey roared into the Gulf Coast, some residents in Texas struggled with no drinking water, fires continued to erupt at a stricken chemical plant and funerals began for some of the mounting toll of victims.

— Charlie Riedel / AP

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Residents check on their house and two of their cats behind thick smoke during the La Tuna Fire on Sept. 2 near Burbank, California. The wildfire focred the evacuation of hundreds of homes in Sun Valley, Burbank and Glendale.

Twenty large blazes burned across the state over a holiday weekend of record heat, including one outside Yosemite National Park that moved through ancient sequoia trees and another that burned five homes in Los Angeles.

About 100 Los Angles firefighters are expected to return soon from Texas, where they've been helping survivors from Hurricane Harvey.

— David McNew / Getty Images

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The Visions In Motion dance group prepares to march in the West Indian American Day Parade in celebration of the Caribbean Carnival on Sept. 4 in New York.

Revelry, cultural pride and newly tightened security mixed Monday at one of the largest U.S. celebrations of Caribbean communities, as the city tried to ensure safety at an event that has been marred by nearby violence.

In all, thousands of revelers, musicians, dancers and costumed troupes turned out to bounce to the steel-drum beat of Brooklyn's melting-pot Labor Day tradition: a daylong West Indian party, featuring a morning festival called J'ouvert, which combines the French words "jour" and "ouvert" and refers to daybreak, and an afternoon Caribbean Carnival parade.

— Yana Paskova / Getty Images

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A car is surrounded by debris from Hurricane Irma on the Dutch half of the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Sept. 7. Irma weakened from a Category 5 storm to Category 4 on Friday morning with maximum sustained winds near 155 mph, but it remained a powerful hurricane.

French, British and Dutch military authorities rushed aid to a devastated string of Caribbean islands where at least 12 people were dead and thousands homeless.

Storm damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, in St. Martin on Sept. 6, 2017. Irma cut a path of devastation across the northern Caribbean, leaving thousands homeless after destroying buildings and uprooting trees. Significant damage was reported on the island that is split between French and Dutch control.

Irma, the strongest Atlantic Ocean hurricane on record, struck the island as a fearsome Category 5 storm. No other storm in recorded history has maintained top winds of 185 mph for 37 hours.

Ivanka Trump arrives at Andrews Air Force Base on Sept. 6 in Maryland.

— Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

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A groom naps as newlywed couples attend a mass wedding ceremony held by the Unification Church at Cheongshim Peace World Center in Gapyeong, South Korea on Sept. 7.

— Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters file

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The Eagle Creek wildfire burns as golfers play at the Beacon Rock Golf Course in North Bonneville, Washington on Sept. 4.

Wildfire season this year was supposed to be mild after an extremely wet winter and spring but has ended up one of the worst in U.S. history in land burned. The foliage that sprouted from previous rain and snow has gone bone-dry in intense heat, feeding flames in places that have not seen downpours in months and strangling cities with smoke.

— Kristi McCluer / Reuters

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A North Korean soldier stands on the bank of the Yalu river near the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, in China's northeast Liaoning province on Sept. 4. The five-nation BRICS grouping meeting in China said on Sept. 4 it "strongly deplores" North Korea's latest nuclear test, adding to global condemnation of Pyongyang.

— Greg Baker / AFP - Getty Images

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A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river on the border with Myanmmar, in Cox's Bazar's Teknaf area on Sept. 4.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, fleeing the latest round of violence to engulf their homes in Myanmar, have been walking for days to escape what they describe as certain death.

The Rohingya, an ethnic minority from Myanmar's western Rakhine state, have faced systematic persecution at the hands of the Buddhist majority for decades. The military junta that ruled the nation for decades stripped them of their citizenship. The democratically-elected government under the leadership of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi has looked the other way as the Rohingya were pushed into squalid camps in their own towns and villages.

— Bernat Armangue / AP

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A Rohingya refugee girl looks next to newly arrived refugees who fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in Ukhiya on Sept. 6.

Fresh horror was unleashed on Aug. 25, when fighters of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked government forces and prompted Myanmar soldiers to retaliate with "clearance operations" they say were aimed at flushing the insurgents out from Rohingya villages.

The Myanmar government blames the insurgents for setting fire to their own homes and killing Buddhists in Rakhine.

— K M Asad / AFP - Getty Images

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Rohingya Muslim refugees make their way into Bangladesh after crossing the Myanmar Bangladesh border on Sept. 7 in Whaikhyang Bangladesh.

As far as the eye can see, they trudge through treacherously deep mud, across rice paddy fields and past rain-swollen creeks into Bangladesh.

The exhausted and starving refugees pouring into Bangladesh tell a story of targeted shootings by Myanmar troops and warnings to leave their homes if they wanted to live.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer makes a point to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office after a meeting on government funding at the White House on Sept. 6.

Trump overruled congressional Republicans and his own treasury secretary and cut a deal with Democrats to fund the government and raise the federal borrowing limit for three months, all part of an agreement to speed money to Harvey relief.

— Alex Wong / Getty Images

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A search and rescue team approaches the Soyuz MS-04 capsule carrying the International Space Station crew with U.S. astronauts Jack Fischer, Peggy Whitson and Fyodor Yurchikhin of Russia after its landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Sept. 3.

Whitson's 665 days off the planet — 288 days on this mission alone — exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide. Whitson said she's hungry for pizza and can't wait to use a regular flush toilet again.

Because of the effects of Hurricane Harvey, NASA could not get its plane from Houston in time for the crew's landing. The astronauts will meet up with the NASA plane for the final leg of their journey. They should be back in Houston on Sunday night.

— Sergei Ilnitsky / Pool via Reuters

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A man rushes past layers of security officers and runs into the massive fire at the Burning Man festival's signature ceremony in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada on Sept. 2. Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, died of his injuries a few hours later.

Late Saturday night, Mitchell broke through a two-layer security perimeter during the Man Burn event in which a giant, wooden effigy is set ablaze.

He was airlifted to the UC Davis hospital burn center in California, where he died Sunday morning. The sheriff said doctors confirmed Mitchell wasn't under the influence of alcohol, but a toxicology report is pending.